 Section 34 of the Anatomy of Melancholy, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Morgan Scorpion. The Anatomy of Melancholy, Volume 1 by Robert Burton, Section 34. Partition 1, Section 2. Member 3, Subsection 10. Discontents, Cares, Misery etc. Causes. Discontents, Cares, Crosses, Misery or whatsoever it is that shall cause any molestation of spirits, grief, anguish and perplexity, may well be reduced to this head, preposterously placed here in some men's judgments they may seem. Yet, in that Aristotle in his rhetoric defines these cares, as he doth envy, emulation etc, still by grief, I think I may well rank them in this irascible role, being that they are as the rest, both causes and symptoms of this disease, producing the like inconveniences and are most part accompanied with anguish and pain. The common etymology will evince it. Cura quasi cor url, dementes curae, insomnes curae, damnosai curae, tristes, modakis, carnifices etc, biting, eating, gnawing, cruel, bitter, sick, sad, unquiet, pale, tetric, miserable, intolerable cares as the poets call them, worldly cares, and are as many in number as the sea sands. Galen, Phonelius, Felix Plata, Valescas de Taranta etc, reckon afflictions, miseries, even all these contentions, and vexations of the mind as principal causes, in that they take away sleep, hinder concoction, dry up the body, and consume the substance of it. They are not so many in number, but their causes be as diverse, and not one of a thousand free from them, or that can vindicate himself, from that Arte Dea, Poominum Capita Moleta Ambulance, Plantus Pedum Tenerus Habens, Overmen's heads walking aloft, with tender feet treading so soft. Homer's goddess Arte has not involved into this discontented rank, or plagued with some misery or other. Hyginus, Fabuli 220, to this purpose have a pleasant tale. Dame Cura by chance went over a brook, and taking up some of the dirty slime, made an image of it. Jupiter effed soonce coming by, put life to it, but Cura and Jupiter could not agree what name to give him, or who should own him. The matter was referred to Saturn as Judge. He gave this arbitrament. His name shall be Homo Abhumo, Cura Aeum Procidiat Quandio Vivat. Care shall have him whilst he lives, Jupiter his soul, and tell us his body when he dies. But to leave tales. A general cause, a continued cause, an inseparable accident. To all men is discontent, care, misery. Were there no other particular affliction, which who is free from, to molest a man in this life, the very cogitation of that common misery were enough to macerate and make him weary of his life, to think that he can never be secure, but still in danger, sorrow, grief and persecution. For to begin at the hour of his birth, as Tinney doth elegantly describe it, he is born naked and falls awining at the very first. He is swaddled and bound up like a prisoner, cannot help himself, and so he continues to his life's end. Could just quay faripabulum, saith Seneca, impatient of heat and cold, impatient of labour, impatient of idleness, exposed to fortunes' continuities. To a naked mariner Lucretius compares him, cast on shore by shipwreck, cold and comfortless in an unknown land. No estate, age, sex can secure himself from this common misery. A man that is born of a woman is of short continuance and full of trouble. Job 14, 1, 22. And while his flesh is upon him, he shall be sorrowful, and while his soul is in him, it shall mourn. All his days are sorrow and his travels griefs. His heart also takeeth not rest in the night. Ecclesiastes 2, 23 and 2, 11. All that is in it is sorrow and vexation of spirit, ingress, progress, regress, egress, much alike. Blindness seizes us on us all in the beginning, labour in the middle, grief in the end, error in all. What day arises to us without some grief, care, or anguish? Or what so secure and pleasing a morning have we seen that has not been overcast before the evening? One is miserable, another ridiculous, a third odious. One complains of this grievance, another of that. Alicuando nervei, alicuando pedes vexant, Seneca, nuk distilatio, nuk epartis morbis, nuk diest, nuk superest sangris, now the headaches, then the feet, now the lungs, then the liver, etc. Friccensis exuberant, sed est frudori degena sangris, etc. He is rich, but baseborn, he is noble, but poor, a third half means, but he wants health per adventure, or which to manage his estate, children vex one, wife a second, etc. Nemo faca leicam conditione suracon codut. No man is pleased with his fortune. A pound of sorrow is familiarly mixed with a drama of content, little or no joy, little comfort, but everywhere danger, contention, anxiety, in all places, go where thou wilt, and thou shalt find discontent, cares, woes, complaints, sickness, diseases, encumbrances, exclamations. If thou look into the market there, saith Chrysostom, is brawling and contention, if to the court, there, neighboury, and fluttery, etc., if to a private man's house there's carc and care, heaviness, etc. As he said of old, nil homine in terror spirit miseromagis alma. No creature so miserable as man, so generally molested, in miseries of body, in miseries of mind, miseries of heart, in miseries of sleep, in miseries awake, in miseries wheresoever he turns, as Bernard found. Nun quid tentatio est vita frumana superteram, a mere temptation is our life, Augustine Confessions, Book 10, Chapter 28. Gatena perpetturorum malorum et chris protest molestias et difficultatis parti. Who can endure the miseries of it? In prosperity we are insolent and intolerable, dejected in adversity, in all fortunes foolish and miserable. In adversity I wish for prosperity, and in prosperity I am afraid of adversity. What mediocrity may be found? Where is no temptation? What condition of life is free? Wisdom hath labour annexed to it, glory, envy, riches and cares, children and incumbences, pleasure and diseases, rest and beggary go together, as if a man were therefore born, as the Platonists told, to be punished in this life for some precedent sins. All that, as Pliny complained, nature may be rather accounted a stepmother than a mother to us, all things considered, no creature's life so brittle, so full of fear, so mad, so furious. Only man is plagued with envy, discontent, griefs, covetousness, ambition, superstition. Our whole life is an Irish sea, wherein there is naught to be expected but tempestuous storms and troublesome waves, and rows infinite. Tantum malorum pelagos aspicio, but non sit inde en atandi copia. No Halcyonian times, wherein a man can hold himself secure, or agree with his present estate, but as Boethius infers, there is something in every one of us which before trial we seek, and having tried abhor. We earnestly wish and eagerly covet, and are as soon weary of it. Thus between hope and fear, suspicions, angers, interspemque matumque, timores interet iras, betwixt falling in, falling out, etc. We bangle away our best days, before out our times, we lead a contentious, discontent, tumultuous, melancholy, miserable life, in so much that if we could foretell what was to come, and put to our choice, we should rather refuse than accept of this painful life. In a word, the world itself is a maze, a labyrinth of errors, a desert, a wilderness, a den of thieves, cheaters, etc. Full of filthy puddles, horrid rocks, precipitiums, an ocean of adversity, and heavy yoke, wherein infirmities and calamities overtake and follow one another as the sea waves, and if we escape stiller, we fall foul of coerbdice, and so in perpetual fear, labour, anguish, we run from one plague, one mischief, one burden to another. Duram servientis servitutem, and you may assume separate weight from lead, heat from fire, moistness from water, brightness from the sun, as misery, discontent, care, hilarity, danger from a man. Our towns and cities are but so many dwellings of human misery, in which grief and sorrow, as he right well observes out of solon, innumerable troubles, labours of mortal men and all manner of vices are included as in so many pens. Our villages are like molehills, and men as so many emits, busy, busy still, going to and fro, in and out, and crossing one another's projects, as the lines of several sea-cards cut each other in a global map. Now light and merry, but, as one follows it, by and by sorrowful and heavy, now hoping, then distrusting, now patient, tomorrow crying out, now pale, then red, running, sitting, sweating, trembling, falting, etc. Some few amongst the rest, or perhaps one of a thousand, may be Pullus Jovis in the world's esteem. Galini, Philius Albae, unhappy and fortunate man, add Invidium Felix, because rich, fair, well-elied in honour and office, yet, per adventure, ask himself, and he will say, that of all others, he is most miserable and unhappy. A fair shum, hicksockers novus elegans, as he said, said Nescus ubi urat, but thou knowest not where it pinches. It is not another man's opinion can make me happy, but a Seneca will have it. He is a miserable wretch that doth not accouch himself happy, though he be sovereign lord of a world. He is not happy if he think himself not to be so. For what avail is it, what thine estate is, or seem to others, if thou thyself dislike it? A common humour it is of all men to think well of other men's fortunes, and dislike their own. Cree placket alterius, so a nimmerum est audio sores, but Cree fit meconius, etc. How comes it to pass, what's the cause of it? Many men are of such a perverse nature, they are well pleased with nothing, says the Odoret. Neither with riches nor poverty, they complain when they are well and when they are sick, grumble at all fortunes, prosperity and adversity. They are troubled in a cheap year, in a barren, plenty or not plenty, nothing pleases them, war nor peace, with children nor with that. This for the most part is the humour of us all, to be discontent, miserable and most unhappy, as we think at least, and show me him that is not so, or that ever was otherwise. Quintus Metellus, his felicity, is infinitely admired among the Romans, in so much that, as Patrocullus mentioned us of him, you can scarce find of any nation, order, age, sex, one for happiness to be compared unto him. He had, in a word, boner anime, corpois et fortunae, goods of mind, body and fortune, so had P. Mutianus, Crassus. L'Amsaca, that lackademonian lady, was such another in Pliny's conceit. A king's wife, a king's mother, a king's daughter, and all the world esteemed as much of Polycreates of Samos. The Greeks brag of their Socrates, Foccheon, Aristides, the Sophidians in particular of their Aglaeus, Omnivetaphilix, Abomnipericula immunis, which by the way, Parsonius held impossible. The Romans of their Cato, Curius, Fabricius, for the composed fortunes and retired estates, government of passions and contempt of the world. Yet none of all these were happy or free from discontent, neither Metellus, Crassus, nor Polycreates, for he died a violent death and so did Cato. And how much evil doth lack Tantius and the adored speak of Socrates, a weak man and so of the rest. There is no content in this life, but as he said, all is vanity and vexation of spirit, lame and imperfect. Hadst thou Sampson's hair, Milo's strength, Scandaburg's arm, Solomon's wisdom, Absalom's beauty, Cresces's wealth, Percetus' obulum, Caesar's valour, Alexander's spirit, Tully or Demosthenes' eloquence, Geige's ring, Parsonius' pegasus, and Gorgon's head, Nestor's years to come, all this world would not make the absolute, give thee content and true happiness in this life, or so continue it. Even in the midst of all our mirth, jollity and laughter, is sorrow and grief, or if there be true happiness amongst us, it is but for a time. Desinat in Piscum, Muglia, Formosa, Supeme, a handsome woman with a fish's tail, a fair morning turns to a larring afternoon. Brutus and Cassius, once renowned, both eminently happy, yet usual scarce find, too, safe particulars, cause fortuna maturius destituit, whom fortune sooneth forsook. Hannibal, a conqueror of his life, met with his match, and was subdued at last, of Curit Forti, Primarge Fortis Erit. One is brought in triumph as Caesar into Rome, Alcibiades into Athens, Coronas Aureus Donatus, crowned, honoured, admired. By and by his statues demolished, he hised out, massacred, et cetera. Magnus Gonsalva, that famous Spaniard, was of the prince and people at first honoured, approved, forthwith confined and banished. Admirandus Actiones, Graves Pleurunque secruunto, invidiae, et aqueis calumniae. Tis Polybius his observation, grievous enemies and bitter calumnies, commonly follow renowned actions. One is born rich, dies a beggar, sounds to-day, sick to-morrow. Now, in most flourishing estate, fortunate and happy. By and by deprived of his goods by foreign enemies, robbed by thieves, spoiled, captivated, impoverished, as they of rubber put under iron sores and under iron harrows, and under axes of iron, and cast into the tile kiln. Quidmi felicem toties dactastis amnici, quikekidit, stabily non-erat ilegradu. He, that earthed march like Xerxes with innumerable armies, as rich as Crises, now shifts for himself in a poor cockboat, is bound in iron chains with vajazet the Turk, and a footstool with Aurelion, for a tyrannising conqueror to trample on. So many casualties there are, that as Seneca said of a city consumed with fire, Unna deets interest intermaximum kivitatim et nullam. One day betwixt a great city and none. So many grievances from outward accidents and from ourselves, our own indiscretion, inordinate appetite. One day betwixt a man and no man. And which is worse, as if discontent and miseries would not come fast enough upon us. Homo homini deyman. We moral, persecute, and study how to sting, gall, and vex one another with mutual hatred, abuses, injuries. Fraying upon and devouring as so many ravenous birds. And as druglers, pandas, bords, cozening one another, or raging as wolves, tigers, and devils, we take a delight to torment one another. Men are evil, wicked, malicious, treacherous, and naught. Not loving one another or loving themselves. Not hospitable, charitable, nor sociable as they ought to be, but counterfeit, dissemblers, ambidextors, all for their own ends. Hard-hearted, merciless, pitiless, and to benefit themselves, they care not what mischief they procure to others. Thragsonoi and Gorgo in the poet, when they had got in to see those costly sights, they then cried bene est, and would thrust out all the rest. When they are rich themselves, in honour preferred, full, and have even that they would, they devour others of those pleasures which youth requires, and they formerly have enjoyed. He sits at table in a soft chair at ease, but he does remember in the meantime that a tired waiter stands behind him, and hungry fellow ministers to him full. He is a thirst that gives him drink, says Epictetus, and is silent whilst he speaks his pleasure, pensive, sad when he laughs. Plano say, follow it, our role. He feasts, revels, and profusely spends, has variety of robes, sweet music, ease, and all the pleasure the world can afford, whilst many in hunger-starved poor creature pines in the street, once close to cover him, labours hard all day long, runs, rides for a trifle. Bites per adventure from son to son, sick and ill, weary, full of pain and grief, is in great distress and sorrow of heart. He loaves and scorns his inferior, hates or emulates his equal, envies his superior, insults over all such as are under him, as if he were of another species, a demigod, not subject to any fall or human infirmities. Generally they love not, are not beloved again, they tire out others bodies with continual labour, they themselves living at ease, caring for none else, Sibi Nati, and are so far many times from putting to their helping hand, that they seek all means to depress, even most worthy and well deserving, better than themselves, those whom they are by the laws of nature bound to relieve and help. As much as in them lies, they will let them cut a wall, starve, beg and hang, before they will anyways, though it be in their power, assist or ease. So unnatural are they for the most part, so unregardful, so hard-hearted, so childish, proud, insolent, so dogged, of so bad a disposition, and being so brutish, so devilishly bent, one towards another, how is it possible that we should be discontent of all sides, full of cares, woes and miseries. If this be not a sufficient proof of their discontent and misery, examine every condition and calling apart. Kings, princes, monarchs and magistrates seem to be most happy, but look into their estate, you shall find them to be most encumbered with cares, in perpetual fear, agony, suspicion, jealousy, that, as he said of a crown, if they knew but the discontent that accompanied it, they would not stoop to take it up. Quem me he regent dubbis, says Corsestone, non-curious plenum. What king canst thou show me, not full of cares? Look not on his crown, but consider his afflictions. Attend not his number of servants, but multitude of corses. Nihil aliod protestas columnis, quam tempestas mentis, as Gregory seconds him. Sovereignty is a tempest of the soul. Scylla, like they have brave titles, but terrible fits. Splendorum titulo, cookie-artem animal, which made the most of his vow, si vel ad tribuno, vel ad interitum ducoretto. If to be a judge or to be condemned were put to his choice, he would be condemned. Rich men are in the same predicament, but their pains are, storti nestiunt, ipsi sentient. They feel, falls perceived not. As I shall prove elsewhere, and their wealth is brittle, like children's rattles, they come and go. There is no certainty in them. Those whom they elevate, they do us suddenly depress, and leave in a veil of misery. The middle sort of men are so many asses to bear burdens, or if they be free and live at ease, they spend themselves and consume their bodies and fortunes with luxury and riot, contention, emulation, etc. The poor I reserve for another place, and their discontents. For particular professions I hold as of the rest. There is no content or security in any. On what course will you pitch, how will you resolve? To be a divine, it is contemptible in the world's esteem. To be a lawyer, it is to be a wrangler. To be a physician, poodet loti, it is loathed. A philosopher, a madman, an alchemist, a beggar. A poet, esuit, and hungry jack, a musician, a player, a schoolmaster, a drudge, and husbandman, an emet. A merchant, his gains are uncertain. A mercenician, vase, a chirurgian, bullsum, a tradesman, a liar. A tailor of beef, a serving-man, a slave. A soldier, a butcher, a smith, or a metalman. The parts never from his nose, a courteous of parasite. As he could find no tree in the woods to hang himself, I can show no state of life to give content. The like you may say of all ages, children live in perpetual slavery, still under that mechanical government of masters, young men, and of ripe years, subject to labour, and a thousand cares of the world, to treachery, falsehood, and cousinage. Enquetted per igneous, the positos canary doloso. Ewing cautious tread on fires, with faithless ashes overhead. Old are full of aches in their bones, cramps and convulsions. Siliconia, dull of hearing, weak-sighted, quarry, wrinkled, harsh. So much altered of that they cannot know their own face in a glass, a berthin' to themselves and others. After seventy years all is sorrow as David hath it. They do not live but linger. If they be sound they fear diseases, if sick weary of their lives. Known est vivere sed valere vita, one complains of want, a second of servitude, another of a secret or incurable disease of some deformity of body, of some loss, danger, death of friends, shipwreck, persecution, imprisonment, disgrace, repulse, contumely, calamity, abuse, injury, contempt, ingratitude, unkindness, scoffs, flouts, unfortunate marriage, single life. Too many children, no children, false servants, unhappy children, barrenness, banishment, oppression, frustrate hopes and ill-success, etc. Talia digonere hock adio sunt multa, lo quaccum ut dolesare valent fabium. But every various instance to repeat would tire even Fabius of incessant trait. Talking Fabius will be tired before he can tell half of them. They are the subject of whole volumes and shall some of them be more opportunity dilated elsewhere. In the meantime, thus much I say of them, that generally they crucify the soul of man. Attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, shrivel them up like old apples, make them as so many anatomies, osa atque pelis estotus, ita cuis machet. They cause tempus fidum et squalidum, cumbersome days, ingratacre tempora, slow, dull and heavy times, make us howl, roar and tear our hairs, as sorrow did in Kibi's tale, and groaned for the very anguish of our souls. Our hearts fail us, as David's did, Psalm 40, 12, for innumerable troubles that compassed him, and we are ready to confess with Hezekiah, Isaiah 58, 17, behold, for felicity I had bitter grief, to weep with Heraclitus, to curse the day of our birth with Jeremy 2014, and our stars with Job, to hold that axiom of Salanus better never to have been born, and the best next of all to die quickly, or if we must live to abandon the world as Timon did, creep into caves and holes as our anchorites, cast all into the sea as Crattis the Barnas, all as Sionbrotus and Vrochiatus 400 auditors precipitate ourselves to be rid of these miseries. End of section 34 Section 35 of the Anatomy of Melancholy Volume 1 This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Recording by Morgan Scorpion The Anatomy of Melancholy Volume 1 by Robert Burton Section 35 Partition 1, Section 2 Member 3, Subsections 11-12 Subsection 11 Concupisable appetite as desires, ambition causes These concupisable and erasable appetites are as the two twists of a rope, mutually mixed one with the other, and both twining about the heart. Both good as Augustine holds, Book 14, Chapter 9, the Civitati Day, if they be moderate, both pernicious if they be exorbitant. With concupisable appetite, however, it may seem to carry with it a show of pleasure and delight, and our concupiscences most part affect us with content and a pleasing object, yet if they be in extremes they rack and ring us on the other side. A true saying it is, desire has no rest, is infinite in itself, endless, and as one calls it, a perpetual rack, or horse-mill, according to Augustine, still going round and ring. They are not so continual as diverse, felicius atomos denumirare possum, sayeth Bernard, cormotus cordus, nonchike, nonchilla cogitol. You may as well reckon up the motes in the sun as them. It extends itself to everything, as greonarius will have it, that is to perforately sort after, or to any further desire, as fenelius interprets it, be it in what kinds, however, it tortures if immoderate, and is, according to Plato and others, an especial cause of melancholy. Multuoses concupistientes gelani antor cogitationes may I, Augustine confessed, that he was torn apices with his manifold desires, and so doth Bernard complain, that he could not rest film them a minute of an hour. This I would have, and that, and then I desire to be such and such. It is a hard matter, therefore, to confine them, being they are so various and many, impossible to apprehend all. I will only insist upon some few of the chief, and most noctious in their kind, as that exorbitant appetite and desire of honour, which we commonly call ambition, love of money, which is covetousness, and that greedy desire of gain, self-love, pride, and inordinate desire of vain glory or applause, love of study and excess, love of women, which will require a just volume of itself, of the other I will briefly speak, and in their order. Ambition, a proud covetousness, or a dry thirst of honour, a great torture of the mind composed of envy, pride, and covetousness, a gallant madness, one defines it a pleasant poison, ambrose a canker of the soul, and hidden plague, Bernard a secret poison, the father of liver, and mother of hypocrisy, the moth of holiness, and cause of madness, crucifying and describing all what it takes hold of. Seneca calls it, Rem solicitam, timidam, vanam, ventosum, a windy thing, a vain, solicitous, and fearful thing. For commonly, they that, like Sisyphus, roll this restless stone of ambition, are in a perpetual agony, still perplexed, sempatageti, tritesque, rekedent, Lucretius, doubtful, timorous, suspicious, loath to offend in word or deed, still cogging and colloging, embracing, capping, cringing, applauding, flattering, blaring, visiting, waiting at men's doors with all affability, counterfeit honesty, and humility. If that will not serve, if once this humour, as Cyprian describes it, possesses thirsty soul, Ambitione's Salsugo will be Bibbulam animamposidet, by hook and by cook he will obtain it, and from his hole he will climb to all honours and offices, if it be possible for him to get up, flattering one, bribing another, he will leave no means on a say to win all. It is a wonder to see how slavishly these kind of men subject themselves when they are about to suit to every inferior person, what pains they will take, run, ride, cast, rot, countermine, protest and swear, vow, promise, what labours undergo, early up, down late, how obsequious and affable they are, how popular and courteous, how they grin and flare upon every man they meet, with what feasting and inviting, how they spend themselves and their fortunes in seeking that many times which they had much better be without, as Cineus the Orator told Pyrrhus, with what waking nights, painful hours, anxious thoughts and bitterness of mind, interspemque metumque, distracted and tired, they consume the interim of their time. There can be no greater plague for the present. If they do obtain their suit, with which such cost and solicitude they have sought, they are not so freed, their anxiety is anew to begin, for they are never satisfied, nihil aliud nisi imperium spirant, their thoughts, their expectations, endeavours, are all for sovereignty and honour. Like Leret Sforza, that huffing Duke of Milan, a man of singular wisdom but profound ambition, born to his own and to the destruction of Italy, though it be to their own ruin and friends undoing, they will contend. They may not seize, but as a dog in a wheel, a bird in a cage, or a squirrel in a chain, so would they as compares them. They climb and climb still, with much labour, but never make an end, never at the top. A knight would be a baronet, and then a lord, and then a vicant, and then an earl, et cetera, a doctor, a dean, and then a bishop, from tribune to plaito, from bailiff to major. Burst this office, and then that, as Pyrrhus in Plutarch, they will first have Greece, then Africa, and then Asia, and swell with Esop's frogs so long, till in the end they burst, or come with Sojanus, Adgamonius Scalus, and break their own necks, or as Evangorous the Piper in Lucian, that blew his pipe so long till he fell down dead. If he chance to miss and have a canvas, he is in a hell on the other side, so dejected that he is ready to hang himself, turn heretic, Turk or traitor in an instant. Enraged against his enemies, he rails, swears, fights, slanders, detracts, envies, murders, and for his own part, see Appetitum exclare non-protest, furore coripitor. If he cannot satisfy his desire, as Bodine writes, he runs mad, so that both ways, hit or miss, he is distracted so long as his ambition lasts. He can look for no other but anxiety and care, discontent and grief in the meantime, madness itself or violent death in the end. The event of this is common to be seen in popular cities or in princes courts, for a courtier's life, as Budeis describes it, is a gallimothry of ambition, lust, fraud, imposture, dissimulation, detraction, envy, pride. In the court a common conventicle of flatterers, time-servers, politicians, etc. or as Anthony Perris will, the suburbs of hell itself. If you will see such discontented persons, there you shall likely find them, and which he observed of the markets of old Rome. Qui perdurum con venire volt hominem, mito in comitium, frimendacum et gloriosum, apod cruasinne sacrum, diteis, damnos maritos, sub-parcilica quieto, etc. Perjured naives, knights of the post, liars, crackers, bad husbands, etc. keep their several stations. They do still, and always did in every commonwealth. Subsection 12 Philargyria, covetousness, a cause. Plutarch, in his book, whether the diseases of the body be more grievous than those of the soul, is of opinion. If you will examine all the causes of our miseries in this life, you shall find them most parts who have had their beginning from stubborn anger, that furious desire of contention, or some unjust or immoderate affection, as covetousness, etc. From whence are wars and contentions amongst you? I will add usury, fraud, rapine, simony, oppression, lying, swearing, bearing false witness, etc. Are they not from this fountain of covetousness, that greediness in getting, tenacity in keeping, solidity in spending, that they are so wicked, unjust against God, their neighbor, themselves, all comes hent. The desire of money is the root of all evil, and they that lust after it pierce themselves through with many sorrows. 1 Timothy 6.10 Hippocrates, therefore, in his epistle to Quateva, and Herbalist, gives him this good counsel, that if it were possible, amongst other herbs, he should cut up that weed of covetousness by the roots, that there be no remainder left, and then know this for certainty, that, together with their bodies, they'll most quickly cure all the diseases of their minds. For it is indeed the pattern, image, epitome of all melancholy, the fountain of many miseries, much discontented care and woe, this inordinate or immoderate desire of gain, to get or keep money, as Bonaventure defines it, or as Augustine describes it, a madness of the soul, Gregory, a torture, Chrysostom, an insatiable drunkenness, Cyprian, blindness, speciosum supplicium, a plague subverting kingdoms, families, and incurable disease. Gudeus, an ill habit yielding to no remedies. Neither Aesculapius nor Plutus can cure them. A continual plague, say Solomon, and vexation of spirit. Another hell. I know there be some of opinion that covetous men are happy and worldly wise, that there is more pleasure than in spending, and no delight in the world like unto it, to us biased problem of old. With what art thou not weary with getting money? What is most delectable? To gain. What is it, traw you, that makes a poor man labour all his lifetime, carry such great burdens, fare so hardly, macerate himself, and endure so much misery, undergo such base offices with so great patience, to rise up early and lie down late? If there were not an extraordinary delight in getting and keeping of money? What makes a merchant that has no need, sattice to perquay dormae, to range all over the world through all those intemperate zones of heat and cold, voluntarily to venture his life, and be content with such miserable famine, nasty usage in a stinking ship? If there were not a pleasure and hope to get money, which does season the rest, and mitigate his indefatigable pains? What makes them go into the bowels of the earth, and hundred fathom deep, endangering their dearest lives, enduring damps and filthy smells, when they have enough already, if they could be content, and no such cause to labour but an extraordinary delight they take in riches? This may seem plausible at first show, a popular and strong argument, but let him that so thinks, consider better of it, and he shall soon perceive that it is far otherwise than he suppose it is. It may be happily pleasing at the first, as most part all melancholy is, for such men likely have some lucuda intervala, pleasant symptoms intermixed, but you must note that of Chrysostom, which is one thing to be rich, another to recovertous. Generally they are all fools, dizzards, madmen, miserable wretches, living beside themselves, sine arte fruende, in perpetual slavery, fear, suspicion, sorrow and discontent, plus allos quamellis habent, and are indeed rather possessed by their money than possessors, as Cyprian hathet, Manchipati Pecunius, bound prentice to their goods, as Pliny, or as Chrysostom, Suri, Divity Arum, slaves and drudges to their substance, and we may conclude of them all, as Valerius doth of Ptolemaeus king of Cyprus, he was in title a king of that island, with a miserable drudge of money. Poteore metalis, libertate carens, wanting his liberty, which is better than gold. Damasipus, the Stoic, in Horus, proves that all mortal men doubt by fit, some one way, some another, but that covetous men are murder than the rest, and he shall truly look into their estates and examine their symptoms, shall find no better of them, but that they are all fools, re et nomine, one Regus 15, for what greater folly can there be or madness, than to macerate himself when he need not, and when, as Cyprian notes, he may be freed from his burden, and ease of his pains will go on still, his wealth increasing, when he hath enough, to get more, to live beside himself, to starve his genius, keep back from his wife and children, neither letting them nor other friends enjoy that which is theirs by right, and which they much need, perhaps. Like a hog, or dog in the manger, he just only keep it, because it shall do nobody else good, hurting himself and others, and for a little momentary pelt, damn his own soul. They are commonly sad and tetric by nature, as Ackab's spirit was, because he could not get Naboth's vineyard. One Regus 22, and if he lay out his money at any time, though it be to necessary uses, to his own children's good, he walls and scolds, his heart is heavy, much disquieted he is, and loaths to part from it. Misa Abstenet et Timet Uti Horus He is of a wearish, dry, pale constitution, and cannot sleep for cares and worldly business. His riches, saith Solomon, will not let him sleep, and unnecessary business which he heapeth on himself, if he do sleep, which is a very unquiet, interrupt, unpleasing sleep, with his bags in his arms. Congestis undi quay sarck Indormit in hyans As though he be at a banquet, or at some merry feast, he sighs for grief of heart as Cyprian hath it, and cannot sleep, though it be upon a downbed. His wearish body takes no rest, troubled in his abundance, and sorrowful in plenty, unhappy for the present, and more unhappy in the life to come. Basil He is a perpetual drudge, restless in his thoughts and never satisfied, a slave, a wretch, a dust-worm. Semper quod idolo sur imolet, sedulous observer at Cyprianus. Prolog Ad Sermon Still seeking what sacrifice he may offer to his golden god. Perfas et nefas, he cares not how, his trouble is endless. Crescant divitii Taman curtae, nestio quid semper abes rei, his wealth increases, and the more he hath, the more he wants, like pharaohs lean kind, which devard the fat, and were not satisfied. Augustine therefore defines covetousness. Cuarum libet revum in honestum, et incertia bil dem, cupidit tartum, a dishonest and insatiable desire of gain, and yet in one of his epistles compares it to hell, of ours all, and yet never hath enough, a bottomless pit, an endless misery. In quem scopolum avaritai cadavorosti senis ud plurimum impingunt, and that which is their greatest corrosive, they are in continual suspicion, fear, and distrust. He thinks his own wife and children are so many thieves, and go about to cousin him, his servants are all false. Rem sum periise, secre er radicarier, et divum atque hominum clamat continual fidem, desturo tigilo secre exit foras. If his doors creak, then out he cries anon, his goods are gone, and he is quite undone. Timidus Plutus, an old proverb, as faithful as Plutus, so doth Aristophanes and Lucian bring him in fearful still, pale, anxious, suspicious, and trusting no man. They are afraid of tempests for their corn. They are afraid of their friends lest they should ask something of them, beg or borrow. They are afraid of their enemies lest they hurt them, thieves lest they rob them. They are afraid of war and afraid of peace, afraid of rich and afraid of poor, afraid of all. Last of all they are afraid of want, that they shall die beggars, which makes them lay up still, and dare not use that they have. The year come, or death, or some loss. And were it not that they are both to lay out money on a rope, they would be hanged forthwith, and sometimes die to save charges, and make away themselves if their corn and cattle miscarry, though they have abundance left as a galeous notes. Valerius makes mention of one that in a famine sold a mouse for two hundred pence, and famished himself. Such are their cares, griefs, and perpetual fears. These symptoms are elegantly expressed by Theoplastis in his character of a coveter's man. Lying in bed, he asked his wife whether she shut the trunks and chests fast, the cap-case be sealed, and whether the hold or be bolted. And though she say all is well, he rises out of his bed in his shut, barefoot and bare-legged, to see whether it be sold, with a dark lantern searching every corner, scarce sleeping a wink all night. Lucian in that pleasant and witty dialogue called galeous, brings in Mycilus the Cobbler disputing with his cock. Sometimes Pythagoras, where after much speech pro and con to prove the happiness of a mean estate and discontents of a rich man, Pythagoras' cock in the end to illustrate by examples that which he had said brings him to griffon the user's house after midnight, and after that to end Cratey's, whom they found both awake, casting up their accounts and telling of their money, lean, dry, pale and anxious, still suspecting lest somebody should make a hold through the wall and so get in, or if a rat or mouse did but stir, starting upon a sudden and running to the door to see whether all were fast. Plotus, in his Olu Larya, makes all Euclio commanding Staphila his wife to shut the doors fast and the fire to be put out, lest anybody should make that an errand to come to his house. When he washed his hands, he was loath to fling away the foul water, complaining that he was undone because the smoke got out of his roof, and as he went from home, seeing a crow scratch upon the mug hill, returned in all haste, taking it for Malam Oman, an ill sign, his money was digged up with many such. He that will but observe their actions shall find these and many such passages not feigned for sport but really performed verified indeed by such covetous and miserable wretches, and that it is, Manifesta Fanesis Utlokkaples Moriaris Agenti Biveri Fatou, a mere madness to live like a wretch and die rich. End of Section 35 Section 36 of the Anatomy of Melancholy, Volume 1 This is a Levervox recording. All Levervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Levervox.org Recording by Morgan Scorpion The Anatomy of Melancholy, Volume 1 by Robert Burton Section 36 Partition 1 Section 2 Member 3 Subsection 13 Love of gaming, etc. and pleasures immoderate Causes It is a wonder to see how many poor, distressed miserable wretches one shall meet almost in every path and street begging for an alms that have been well descended and sometimes in flourishing estate now ragged, tattered and ready to be starved lingering out a painful life in discontent and grief of body and mind and all through moderate lust, gaming, pleasure and riot. It is the common end of all sensual epicures and brutish prodigals superfied and carried away headlong with their several pleasures and lusts. Kebbers in his table St. Ambrose in his second book of Abel and Cain and amongst the rest, Lucian in his tract De Moche de Conductis hath excellent and well deciphered such men's proceedings in his picture of Opulentia, whom he feigns to dwell on the top of a high mount much sought after by many suitors. At their first coming they are generally entertained by pleasure and indolence, and have all the content that possibly may be given so long as their money lasts. But when their means fail they are contemptibly thrust out at a back door, headlong, and their left to shame reproach despair. And he at first that had so many attendants, parasites and followers young and lusty, richly arrayed, and all the dainty fare that might be had with all kind of welcome and good respect and now upon a sudden stripped of all pale, naked, old, diseased and forsaken, cursing his stars and ready to strangle himself, having no other company but repentance, sorrow, grief, derision, vagary and contempt, which are his daily attendants to his life's end. As the prodigal son had exquisite music, merry company, dainty fare at first but a sorrowful reckoning in the end, so have all such vain delights and their followers. Tristeis vuloptatum exetus et chris chris vuloptatum swawum reminisci volet intelliget. As bitter as gull and warmwood is their last, grief of mind madness itself. The ordinary rocks upon which such men do impinge and precipitate themselves are cards, dice, hawks and hounds. Insanum venandi studium, one calls it, insanis substructiones their mad structures, desports, plays, etc. when they are unseasonably used imprudently handled and beyond their fortunes. Some men are consumed by mad fantastical buildings by making galleries, cloisters, terraces, walks, orchards, gardens, pools, willits, bars and such like places of pleasure. Inutileis domos, Xenopon calls them, whatsoever they be delightful things in themselves and acceptable to all beholders and ornament and benefitting some great men, yet unprofitable to others and the sole overthrow of their estates. Foestis in his observations hath an example of such a one that became melancholy upon the like occasion, having consumed his substance in an unprofitable building, which would afterward yield him no advantage. Others, I say, are overthrown by those mad sports of hawking and hunting. Honest recreations and fit for some great men but not for every base inferior person. Whilst they will maintain their falconers, dogs and hunting-nags, their wealth, says Salmud Sir, runs away with the hounds and their fortunes fly away with hawks. They persecute beasts so long till in the end they themselves degenerate into beasts as a grip attacks with them, actaeon-like, for he was eaten to death by his own dogs. So do they devour themselves and their patrimonies in such idle and unnecessary despots. Neglecting in the meantime their more necessary business and to follow their vocations. Overmad too sometimes are our great men in delighting and doting too much on it. When they drive poor husbandmen from their tillage, as Sarasburiensis objects, fling down country farms and whole towns to make parks starving men to feed beasts and punishing in the meantime such a man that shall molest their game more severely than him that is otherwise a common hacker or a notorious thief. But great men are some ways to be excused. The mean assault have no evasion why they should not be counted mad. Pogius the Florentine tells a merry story to this purpose, condemning the folly and impertinent business of such kind of persons. A position of Milan's safety that cured madmen had a pit of water in his house in which he kept his patients some up to the knees, some to the girdle, some to the chin, for murder in Sanii as they were more or less affected. One of them by chance that was well recovered stood in the door and thing a gallant ride by with a hawk on his fist well mounted with his spangles after him would need to know to what use all this preparation served. He made answer to kill certain foals. The patient demanded again what his foal might be worth which he killed in a year. He replied five or ten crowns and when he urged him father what his dogs, horse and hawks stood him in he told him four hundred crowns. With that the patient bad be gone as he loved his life and welfare for if our master come and find thee here he will put thee in the pit amongst madmen up to the chin taxing the madness and folly to end themselves in those idle sports neglecting their business and necessary affairs. Leo Decimus, that hunting pope is much discommended by Jovius in his life for his immoderate desire of hawking and hunting in so much that, as he saith he would sometimes live about Austria weeks and months together leave suitors unrespected balls and pardons unsigned to his own prejudice and many private men's loss the chance crossed in his sport or his game not so good he was so impatient that he would revile and miscall many times men of great worth with most bitter taunts look so sour be so angry and waspish so grieved and molested that it is incredible to relate it but if he had good sport and been well pleased on the other side incredibly munifekienta with unspeakable bounty and munificence and deny nothing to any suitor when he was in that mood to say truth is the common humor of all gamesters as Galateus observes if they win no men living are so jovial and merry but if they lose though it be but a trifle two or three games at tables or dealing at cards for two pence a game they are so choleric and testy that no man may speak with them and break many times into violent passions, oaths, implications and unbesteeming speeches differing from madmen for the time generally of all gamesters and gaming if it be excessive thus much we may conclude that whether they win or lose for the present their winnings are not muno afortuna send insidii as that why Seneca determines not fortunes gifts but baits the common catastrophe is beggary utpestis vitam sic adamid alia pecuniam as the plague takes away life from the gods for omnes nude in opes et egeni alias skilla vorax speciers certissima furti non contenta bonus animum coque per fida mergit fida furax infamous ines furiosa ruina for a little pleasure they take and some small gains and getings now and then their wives and children are ringed in the meantime and they themselves with loss of body and soul end I will say nothing of those prodigious prodigals per dendai pecuniai genitos acetat antni qui patrimonium sine ula fori columbia amitunt seisiprian and mad ciberitical spendthrift qui que una comedant patrimonia coena and eat up all at a breakfast at a supper or amongst boards, parasites and players consume themselves in an instant as if they had flung it into tiber with great wages vain and idle expenses et cetera not themselves only but even all their friends as a man desperately swimming drowns him that comes to help him by surety ship and borrowing they willingly undo all their associates and allies erati pecuniis, as he saith angry with their money what with a wanton eye a licorice tongue and a gamesome hand that impoverished themselves mortgaged their wits together with their lands and entombed their ancestors' fair possessions in their bowels they may lead the rest of their days in prison as many times they do they repent at leisure and when all is gone begin to be thrifty but till then too late to look about their end is misery, sorrow, shame and discontent till they deserve to be infamous and discontent cata midiari in Amphitheatro as by Adrian the Emperor's edict they were of old decoctores bonorum sworum as he calls them prodigal fools to be publicly shamed and hissed out of all societies rather than to be pitted or relieved the tuscans and boetians brought their bankrupts into the marketplace in a beer with an empty purse carried before them all the boys following where they sat all day curcumstante plebe to be infamous and ridiculous at Padua in Italy they have a stone called the Stone of Turpitude near the Senate House where spent rifts and such as disclaimed non-payment of debts do sit with their hinderpots bare that by that note of disgrace others may be terrified from all such vain expense or borrowing more than they can tell how to pay the civilians evolved set guardians over such brain-sick prodigals as they did over madmen to moderate their expenses that they should not so loosely consume their fortunes to the utter undoing of their families I may not here omit those two main plagues and common dotages of humankind wine and women which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people they go commonly together to whom is sorrow to whom is woe to whom is sorrow to whom is sorrow to whom is sorrow to whom is woe but to such a one as love's drink it causes torture veno torches et ira and bitterness of mind veno furoris wine of madness as well he may for insanere fac it sanos it makes sound men second sad and wise men mad to say and do they know not what AXIDID HODIE TERRIBLEIS CUSSUS SAFE SENT AUGUSTIN here a miserable accident syrulous sun this day in his drink martrum fragnantum necrita oppressit sororum violare voluit patrum oxidit ferre et duas alias sororis ad mortum vulneravit would have violated his sister killed his father etc a true saying it was of him veno daari le titiam et dolorum drink causes mirth and drink causes sorrow drink causes poverty and want proverbs 21 shame and disgrace multi ignobleis eversere of veno potum et augustin amissis honoribus profugi aberrauant many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met many men have met car, saith the wise man, at quay homini cerebrum minuit. Pleasant at first years, like Dioscoridae's Rodordaphne, that fair plant to the eye, but poison to the taste, the rest as bitter as one would in the end, and sharp as a two-edged sword. Her house is the way to hell, and goes down to the chambers of death. What more sorrowful can be said, they are miserable in this life, mad beasts, led like oxen to the slaughter, and that which is worse, whormasters and drunkards shall be judged. Amotunt gratiam, saith Augustine, purdent glorium, incontenationum eternum. They lose grace and glory. Brevis illa voloptas, abrogat eternum caile decus. They gain hell and eternal damnation. End of Section 36. Number 3, Subsection 14. Pelotia, or self-love, vain glory, praise, honor, immoderate applause, pride, overmuch joy, etc., causes. Self-love, pride, and vain glory. Cacus amor sui, which cruisestome calls one of the devil's three great nets. Bernard, an arrow which pierces the soul through, and slays it, a sly, insensible enemy, not perceived, our main causes. Where neither anger, lust, covetousness, fear, sorrow, etc., nor any other perturbation can they hold, this will slyly and insensibly pervert us. Crem nonculla vicit pelotia, superavit, saith Cyprian, whom surfiting could not overtake, self-love hath overcome. He hath scorned all money, bribes, gifts, upright, otherwise, and sincere, hath inserted himself to no-fund imagination, and sustained all those tyrannical concupiscences of the body, hath lost all his honor, captivated by vain glory. Cricestome subio, tu sola animum mentemque, feroris, gloria. A greater salt and cause of our present melody, although we do most part neglect, take no notice of it, yet this is a violent batter of our souls, caused with melancholy and dotage. This pleasing humour, this soft and whispering popular air, a marvellous insania, this delectable frenzy, most irrefragable passion, mentis gratisimus error, this acceptable disease, which so sweetly sets upon us, ravishes our senses, lulls our souls asleep. Puffs up our hearts as so many bladders, and that without all feeling, in so much as those that are misaffected with it, never so much as wants perceive it, or think of any cure. We commonly love him best in this melody, that doth us most harm, and are very willing to be hurt. A doula tonne verse nostrius libentur facemus, saith Jerome, we love him, we love him for it. O bronchiari soarei, soarei for it art a tally hike, to our sweet to hear it, and as pliny doth ingenuously confess to his dear friend Orgarinus, all thy writings are most acceptable, but those especially that speak of us. Again a little after to maximus. I cannot express how pleasing it is to me to hear myself commended, Though we smile to ourselves, at least ironically, when parasites bedorb us with false encomiums, as many princes cannot choose but to, Cuntale could nihil intras se repereint. When they know they come as far short as a mouse to an elephant of any such virtues, yet it doth us good. Though we seem many times to be angry, and blush at our own praises, yet our souls inwardly rejoice. It puffs us up, to his phallic suavitas bland as daemon, makes us swell beyond our bounds, and forget ourselves. Her two daughters are likeness of mind, immoderate joy, and pride, not excluding those other concomitant vices, which Iodocus lorikeus reckons up, bragging, hypocrisy, pleavishness, and curiosity. Now the common cause of this mischief arises from ourselves or others. We are active and passive. It proceeds inwardly from ourselves, as we are active causes, from an overweening conceit we have of our good parts, own worth, which indeed is no worth, our bounty, favour, grace, valour, strength, wealth, patience, meekness, hospitality, beauty, temperance, gentry, knowledge, wit, science, art, learning, our excellent gifts and fortunes, for which Narcissus like, we admire, flatter, and applaud ourselves, and think all the world esteems so of us, and as deformed women easily believe those that tell them they be fair, we are too credulous of our own good parts and praises, too well persuaded of ourselves. We brag and vendedate our own works, and scorn all others in respect of us, in flatis cayentia, saith Paul. Our wisdom, our learning, all our geese are swans, and we as basely esteem and vilify other men, as we do over highly prize and value our own. We will not suffer them to be in secundus, no, not in tortious, what, make them confer to ureces? They are mores, muskai, culiques pricee, knits and flies compared to his inexorable and supercilious, eminent and arrogant worship, though indeed they be far before him. Only wise, only rich, only fortunate, valourous and fair, puffed up with this timpani of self-conceit, as that proud Pharisee they are not, as they suppose, like other men, of a purer and more precious metal. Soli rega rendi sunt epicarques, which that wise periandre held of such, meditantor omne equi prius negotium, et cetera, no requendum, saith Erasmus. I knew one so arrogant that he thought himself inferior to no man living, like Kaldesthenes the philosopher, that neither held Alexander's acts, nor any other subject worthy of his pen, such was his insurancy, or Seleucus, king of Syria, who thought none fit to contend with him but the Romans. Eos solos dignos routes Grbuscom de Imperio Cotaret, that which Tully rigged to Atticus long since, is still in force. There was never yet true poet nor orator, that thought any other better than himself. And such, for the most part, are your princes, potentate, great philosophers, historiographers, authors of sects for heresies, and all our great scholars, as Hiram defines. A natural philosopher is a glorious creature, and a very slave of rumour, fame, and public opinion. And though they write dick and temp to Gloria, yet as he observes, they will put their names to their books. Robes et Famae, Messempe d'Edi, safe rebellious polio. I have wholly consecrated myself to you and fame. Tis all my desire, night and day, tis all my study to raise my name. Proud Pliny seconds him. Cuan-cuan-o, etc. And that, benglorious orator, is not ashamed to confess, in an epistle of his, to Marcus Lecheus. Ardeo incredibly curridiate, etc. I burn with an incredible desire to have my name registered in thy book. Out of this fountain proceed all those cracks and drags. Speramus Cummina Fingre, Posse Linen de Kedro, et Leni Cervanda Cupreso, non ucitata neck tenui vera penna, neck in terra movable longis. Nupavum altumulimodo, nul motale loco, dica qua violens obstrepit, orcidus, ecsegi monumentum ere perenius. Iancre opus ecsegi, cot neck joves ira, neck ignes, etc. Cum venit iledies, etc. Pote, tarman meliori, mei superalter perenius astra ferro, nul menque erit indenebe nostrum. This of Ovid I have paraphrased in English. And when I am dead and gone, my corpse laid under a stone, my fame shall yet survive, and I shall be alive, in these my works for ever, my glory shall persevere, etc. And that of enius. Nemo mei la chrismis decoret, necque funera fletug facet cor, volito doctor per aura virum. Let none shed tears over me, or adorn my beer with sorrow, because I am eternally in the mouths of men, with many such proud strains, and foolish flashes too common with writers. Not so much as Democaris on the topics, but he will be immortal. Tepodius de Fama shall be famous, and well he deserves, because he writ of fame, and every trivial poet must be renowned. He seeks the applause of the public. This puffing humour it is, that hath produced so many great tomes, built such famous monuments, strong castles, and mausolean tomes, to have their acts eternised. Deguto monstrari et dicchiae hic est, to be pointed at with the finger, and to have it said, there he goes, to see their names inscribed, as Pryne on the walls of Thebes. Pryne facet. This calls hath so many bloody battles, et noctes cogit vigilari serenis, and induces us to watch, during calm nights, long journeys. Magnum Ito Nintendo said that mihi gloria vires. I contemplate a monstrous journey, but the love of glory strengthens me for it, gaining honour, a little applause, pride, self-love, vain glory. This is it which makes them take such pains, and break into those ridiculous strains, this high conceit of themselves, to scorn all others. Ridiculo fastu et intolerando contemptu, as Pryne on the grammarian contempt varo, secum et natus et moriturus literus giactan, and brings them to the height of insurgency, that they cannot endure to be contradicted, or hear of anything but their own commendation, which Hyrom notes of such kind of men. And as Austin well seconds him, it is their sole study day and night to be commended and applauded, when, as indeed in all wise men's judgments, quivers cor sapit, they are mad empty vessels, fudges, beside themselves, derided, et ut camellus in proverbial querenz cor newer etium cos habebat oris amisit. Their works are toys, as an almanac out of date, authoris perreant garulitate suri. They seek fame and immortality, but reap dishonour and infamy. They are a common obloquy, insensate, insensati, and come far short of that which they suppose or expect. Opua ut cis vitalis metul. How much I dread thy days are short, some lord shall strike thee dead. Of so many myriads of poets, returitions, philosophers, sophists, as Eusebius well observes, which have written in former ages, scarce one of a thousand's works remains, nomina et libre simul cum cor poribus interi erent. Their books and bodies are perish together. It is not as they vainly think they shall surely be admired and immortal, as one told Philip of Macadone insultingly, after a victory, that his shadow was no longer than before, we may say to them, Nostemirama, sed non cum decide vulgar, sed vilot harpius gorgonus et furius. We marvel, too, not as the vulgar we, but as we gorgon's harpies or furies see. Or if we do applaud, honour and admire, quote of Paz, how small a part in respect of the whole world, never so much as he is our names, how few take notice of us, how slender a tract, as scant as Alcibiades land in a map. And yet every man must and will be immortal, as he hopes, and extend his fame to our antipodes. When as half, no, not a quarter of his own province or city, neither knows nor hears of him, but say they did, what's the city to a kingdom, a kingdom to Europe, Europe to the world, the world itself that must have an end, if compared to the least visible star in the firmament, eighteen times bigger than it. And then, if those stars be infinite, and every star there be a sun, as some will, and as this some of us at his planets about him, all inhabited, what the portion bear we to them, and where's our glory? Orbum ter Arum victor Romanus herbevat, as he cracked in Protonius. All the world was under Augustus. And so in Constantine's time, Eusebius Braggs he governed all the world, Universum, Mundum, Freclare, Admormum, Administravit, et omnis orbis gentes imperatori subjecti. So of Alexander it is given out, the four monarchies, etc., when as neither Greeks nor Romans ever had the fifteenth part of the now known world, nor half of that which was then described. What Braggadokios are they, and we then? Crombreris hittinobis sumo, as he said, Prudebit auctinominus. How short a time, how little a wild of this fame of ours continue. Every private province, every small territory and city, when we have all done, will yield as generous spirits, as brave examples in all respects, as famous as ourselves. Cadwalader in Wales, Rolo in Normandy, Robin Hood and Little John, are as much renowned in Sherwood as Caesar in Rome, Alexander in Greece, or his Hephaestion. Omnis etas omnis grei populus in exemplum et admirationium veniet. Every town, city, book is full of brave soldiers, senators, scholars, and though Brachylus was a worthy captain, a good man, and as they thought, not to be matched in lack of daemon, yet as his mother truly said, Flores havert Sparta Brachyda Meliores. Sparta had many better men than ever he was, and howsoever thou admires thyself, thy friend, many an obscure fellow the world never took notice of, had been in place or action, would have done much better than he, or he, or thou thyself. Another kind of madman there is opposite to these, that are insensibly mad, and know not of it, such as condemn all praise and glory, think themselves most free, when as indeed they are most mad, Calcan said Alio Fastu, a company of cynics, such as our monks, hermits, and co-writes, that condemn the world, condemn themselves, condemn all titles, honours, offices, and yet in that contempt are more proud than any man living whatsoever. They are proud in humility, proud in that they are not proud, Sapo Homo Divana Gloriae contemptu, Vanias Gloriator, as Augustine Hathet, Confessiones Book X, Chapter 38, like diogenes, inters glorianta, they brag inwardly, and feed themselves fat with a self-conceit of sanctity, which is no better than hypocrisy. They go in sheeps russet, many great men that might maintain themselves in cloth of gold, and seem to be dejected, humble by their outward carriage, when as inwardly they are swollen full of pride, arrogancy, and self-conceit. And therefore Seneca advised his friend Lucilius, in his attire and gesture, outward actions, especially to avoid all such things as are more notable in themselves, as a rugged attire, hersoot head, horrid beard, contempt of money, coarse lodging, and whatsoever leads to fame that opposite way. All this madness yet proceeds from ourselves, the main engine which batters us is from others. We are merely passive in this business, from a company of parasites and flatters, that with immoderate praise and bombast epithets, glossing titles, false eulogiums, so bedorb and applaud, guild over many a silly and undeserving man, that they clap him quite out of his wits. Res imprimis violenta est, as Hyrum notes, this common applause is a most violent thing, loud and placenta, a drum, fife and trumpet cannot so animate, that fattens men, erects and dejects them in an instant. Palma negata macum, donata reducit opimum, it makes them fatt and lean as false doth conies, and who is that mortal man that can so contain himself, that if he be immodally commended and applauded, will not be moved? Let him be what he will, those parasites will overturn him. If he be a king, he is one of the nine worthy's, more than a man, a god forthwith, edictum domini decoi nostri, and they will sacrifice unto him. Divinos, cii tu, flatiaris, honoris, ultra ipsi dapmus, meritas gris sagravimus arus. If he be a soldier, then Themistocles, Epaminondas, Hector, Achilles, duo fulminar belli, trium viri terrarum, etc., and the valour of both Scipios is too little for him. He is invictisimus serinisimus, multistrofeis or natisimus naturi dominus, although he be leapus galliatus, indeed a very coward, and milksop, and, as he said of Xerxes, postremus infugna, primus infuga, and such a one has never durst looked his enemy in the face. If he be a big man, then he is a Samson, another Hercules, if he pronounce a speech, another Tulli or Demosthenes, as of Herod in the Acts, the voice of God and not of man, if he can make a verse, Homer, Virgil, etc., and then my silly weak patient takes all these eulogumes to himself. If he be a scholar so commanded for his much reading, excellent style, method, etc., he will eviscerate himself like a spider, study to death. Laudatus or Stendit are this Dunonia penis. Peacock like he will display all his feathers. If he be a soldier, and so applauded, his valour extolled, though it be Impar Congressus, as that of Trollus and Achilles, in Felix Puerre, he will combat with a giant run first upon a breach, as another Philippus, he will ride into the thickest of his enemies. Commend his housekeeping, and he will beggar himself. Commend his temperance, he will starve himself. Laudatacre virtus creskit et immensum gloria calca habit. He is mad, mad, mad. No woe with him. Impatiens consortis erit. He will over the Alps to be talked of, or to maintain his credit. Commend an ambitious man, some proud prince of Potentate. C plus acro laudata, saith Erasmus. Christus erigit exerit ominum. Deum se putat. He sets up his crest, and will be no longer a man, but a god. Nihil est quad crederi de se, non aldet curum laudata, deus aqua protestus. How did this work with Alexander? That would need to be Jupiter's son, and go like Hercules in a lion's skin. De mission, a god, dominus deus nostis sic fieri duvet. Like the Persian kings, whose image was adored by all that came into the city of Babylon. Commodus the emperor was so gulled by his flattering parasites, that he must be called Hercules. Antonius the Roman would be crowned with ivy, carried in a chariot, and adored for Bacchus. Cotus, king of Thrace, was married to Minerva, and sent three several messengers one after another to see if she would come to his bed-chamber. Such a one was Jupiter Minicrates, Maximinus, Jovianus, Dioclecianus Hercules. Sappor the Persian king, brother of the sun and moon, and our modern Turks, that will be gods on earth. Kings of kings, gods shadow, commanders of all that may be commanded. Our kings of China and Tartary in this present age. Such a one was Xerxes, that would whip the sea, fetter Neptune, stulter Jack Tantia, and send a challenge to Mount Athos, and such are many Saotish princes wrought into a false paradise by their parasites. It is a common humour, incident to all men, when they are in great places, or come to the solstice of honour, have done or deserved well, to applaud and flatter themselves. Stultitium suum prudent, etc., says Pluterus. Your very tradesmen, if they be excellent, will crack and brag, and show their folly in excess. They have good parts, and they know it, you need not tell them of it. Out of a conceit of their worth, they go smiling to themselves, a perpetual meditation of their trophies and plaudits. They run at last quite mad and lose their wits. Petrarch, Book I, the contempt to Monday, confessed as much of himself, and Cardon, in his fifth book of Wisdom, gives an instance in the smith of Milan, a fellow citizen of his, one gallus de rubes, that being commended for refining of an instrument of Archimedes, for joy ran mad. Sutarch, in the life of Attic Xerxes, have such a like story of one commerce, a soldier that wounded King Cyrus in battle, and grew thereupon so arrogant, that in a short space after he lost his wits. So many men, if any new honour, office, preferment, booty, treasure, possession, or patrimony, ex inspirato, fall unto them for a moderate joy, and continual meditation of it, cannot sleep or tell what they say or do. They are so ravished on a sudden, and with vain conceits transported, there is no rule with them. A paminandus, therefore, the next day, after his lukewarm victory, came abroad all squalid and submiss, and gave no other reason to his friends of so doing, than that he perceived himself the day before, by reason of his good fortune, to be too insolent, over much joyed. That wise and virtuous lady, Green Catherine, Dowager of England, in private talk, upon like occasion, said that she would not willingly endure the extremity of either fortune, but if it were so, that of necessity she must undergo the one, she would be in adversity, because comfort was never wanting in it, but still council and government were defective in the other. They could not moderate themselves. END OF SECTION 37 PART ONE LOVE OF LEARNING OR OVERMUTCH STUDY WITH THE DIGRESSION OF THE MISERY OF SCHOLARS AND WHY THEM USES OUR MELONCOLY LEONARDUS FUXIUS, FELIX PLATER, HERCULUS ASSACSONIA, SPEAK OF A PERCULAR FURY WHICH COMES BY OVERMUTCH STUDY. Frenelius, Book 1, Chapter 18, puts study, contemplation, and continual meditation as a special cause of madness, and in his eighty-sixth consultation cites the same words. Johannes Aculenus, in Libre 9, raises at Al-Nanzurum, Chapter 16, amongst other causes, reckons up Studium vehemence. So doth Levenus Lemneus, Libre de occultus naturi, miraculous, Book 1, Chapter 16. Many men, saith he, come to this melody by continual study, and night waking, and of all other men, scholars are most subject to it, and such rassus adds that I have commonly the finest wits. Marcellius Fissiness, The Sanitator to Ender, Book 1, Chapter 7, puts melancholy amongst one of those five principal plagues of students. It is a common more unto them all, and almost in some measure an inseparable companion. Vero, be like for that cause, calls Triste Philosophus at Severus. Severe, sad, dry, tetric, are common appetites to scholars, and Patricia's, therefore, in the institution of princes, would not have them to be great students. For, as Machiavelle holds, study weakens their bodies, dulls the spirits, debates their strength and courage, and good scholars are never good soldiers, which a certain goth well perceived, for when his countrymen came into Greece, and would have burned all their books, he cried out against it, by no means they should do it, leave them that plague, which in time will consume all their vigour and marshal spirits. The Turks abdicated Cornutus the next heir from the empire, because he was so much given to his book, and is the common tenet of the world, that learning dulls and amincieth the spirits, and so, per consequence, produces melancholy. Two main reasons may be given of it, why students should be more subject to this melody than others. The one is, they live sedentary solitary life, sebe et musis, free from bodily exercise, and those ordinary despots which other men use, and many times, if discontent and idleness concur with it, which is too frequent, they are precipitated into this gulf on a sudden, but the common cause is over much study. Too much learning, as Festus told Paul, hath made thee mad. It is that other extreme which affects it. So did Trincavelius, fined by his experience, in two of his patients, a young baron, and another that contracted this melody by two vermin study. So Festus, in a young divine in Louvain, that was mad, and said he had a bible in his head. Mercedes Fissinus, the sanitat to end the book 1, chapters 1, 3, 4, and book 2, chapter 16, gives many reasons why students doad more often than others. The first is their negligence. Other men look to their tools, a painter will wash his pencils, a smith will look to his hammer, anvil, forge. A husbandman will mend his plow irons, and grind his hatchet if it be dull. A falconer or huntsman will have in a special care of his hawks, hounds, horses, dogs, et cetera. A musician will string and unstring his lute, et cetera. Only scholars neglect that instrument, their brain and spirits, I mean, which they daily use, and by which they range over all the world, which by much study is consumed. Vida, said Lucian, ne for Nicolum nimis intendendo ale quando am pompas, si thou twist not the rope so hard till it lengthed break. Fascinus, in his fourth chapter, gives some other reasons. Saturn and Mercury, the patrons of learning, they're both dry planets, and Oregonus assigns the same cause why mercurialists are so poor and most part beggars, for that their President Mercury has no better fortune himself. The destinies of old put poverty upon him as a punishment, since when poetry and beggary are gemelli, twin-born brats, inseparable companions, and to this day is every scholar poor, gross gold from them runs headlong to the boar. Mercury can help them to knowledge but not to money. The second is contemplation, which dries the brain and extinguishes natural heat, for whilst the spirits are intent to meditation above in the head, the stomach and liver are left destitute, and thence come black blood and crudities by defective concoction, and for want of exercise the superfluous vapours cannot exhale, etc. The same reasons are repeated by Gomesius, Johannes Vosius, Book II, Chapter V, De Pesta, and something more they add, that hard students are commonly troubled with gouts, catars, runes, carrexia, radiopepsia, bad eyes, stone and colic, crudities, opalations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and all such diseases as come by over much sitting. They are most part lean, dry, ill-coloured, spend their fortunes, lose their wits, and many times their lives, and all through immoderate pains and extraordinary studies. If you will not believe the truth this, look upon great Tostatus and Thomas Aquinas' works, and tell me whether those men took pains, peruse Augustine, Hieron, etc., and many thousands besides. Qui coupit optatum courso continuere metam, multatulit fecit quepur, sodavit et elsit. He that desires this wished girl to gain must sweat and freeze before he can attain. And labour hard for it, sodavit Seneca by his own confession, ep. 8, Not a day that I spent idle, part of the night I keep mine eyes open, tired with waking, and now slumbering to their continual task. Here Tully, pro archia poeta. Whilst others loited and took their pleasures, he was continually at his book, so they do that will be scholars, and that to the hazard, I say, of their healths, fortunes, wits, and lives. How much did Aristotle and Ptolemy spend? Unius regni precum d'essay, more than a king's ransom. How many crowns per annum, to perfect arts, the one about his history of creatures, the other on his Almagest? How much time did the Thébet-Bancroit employ to find out the motion of the Eighth Sphere? Forty years and more, some write. How many poor scholars have lost their wits, or become dissidents, neglecting all worldly affairs and their own health, wealth, esse, and benesse, to gain knowledge for which, after all their pains, in this world's esteem, they are accounted ridiculous and silly fools, idiots, asses, and, as often they are, rejected, contempt, derided, doting, and mad? Look for examples in Hildesheim, read Trincavelius, Montonus, Garcius, Mercurialus, Prosper Collinius, in his book De Attrabile. Go to Bethlehem and ask, or if they keep their wits, yet they are esteemed, scrubs, and fools by reason of their carriage. After seven years' study, Statois, Tachytonius' exit, plérum qu'et risum populu, qu'et it. He becomes more silent than a statue, and generally excites people's laughter. Because they cannot ride a horse, which every clown can do. Salute and cold gentlewoman, carve a table, cringe and make conjures, which every common swasher can do, host populus ridet, et cetera. They are laughed to scorn, and accounted silly fools by our gallants. He, many times, such is their misery, they deserve it. A mere scholar, a mere us. Obstipo capite et figentes lumine etteram, murmacum secum et rabiosa silencia rodent, at qu'experycto trutinantur verba labelo, egroti veteres meditantes sonnia, gingid nihilo nihilum, in nihilum nil poser iverti. Who do lean already their heads, piercing the earth with a fixed eye, when, by themselves, they ignore their murmuring, and furious silence, as twirl balancing each word upon their outstretched lip, and when they meditate the dreams of old sick men, as, out of nothing, nothing can be brought, and that which is, can never be turned to naught. Thus they go, commonly meditating unto themselves, thus they sit, such is their action and gesture. Philgosus, Book 8, Chapter 7, makes mention, how Thomas Aquinas, supping with King Louis of France, upon a sudden, knocked his fist upon the table, and cried, concluse must contra Manicheus. His wits were a wool-gathering, as they say, and his head busied about other matters. When he perceived his error, he was much abashed. Such a story there is of Archimedes in Vitruvius, that, having found out the means to know how much gold was mingled with the silver in King Heron's crown, ran naked forth of the bath and cried Eureka, I have found, and was commonly so intent to his studies, that he never perceived what was done about him. When the city was taken, and the soldiers now ready to rifle his house, he took no notice of it. St. Bernard wrote all day long by the Lemnian lake, and asked at last where he was, Morales. It was, Democratus' carriage alone, that made the Abderites suppose him to have been mad, and sent for Hippocrates to cure him. If he had been in any solemn company, he would, upon all occasions, fall a laughing. Theophristus said as much of Heraclitus, for that he continually wept, and Laracius of Minodemus Lampsakus, because he ran like a madman, saying he came from hell as a spy to tell the devils what mortal man did. Your greatest students are commonly no better, silly, soft fellows in their outward behaviour, absurd, ridiculous to others, and no wit experienced in worldly business. They can measure the heavens, range over the world, teach others wisdom, and yet in bargains and contracts they are circumvented by every base tradesman. Are not these men fools? And how should they be otherwise, but as so many sots and schools, when, as he well observed, they neither hear nor see such things as are commonly practised abroad? How should they get experience, by what means? I knew in my time many scholars, Seth Aeneas Silveus, in an epistle of his to Gasperschritic, Chancellor to the Emperor. Excellent, well learned, but so rude, so silly, that they had no common civility, nor knew how to manage their domestic or public affairs. Paglarensis was amazed, and said his farmer had surely cousined him, when he heard and tell that his soul had eleven pigs, and his arse had been one foal. To say the best of this profession, I can give no other testimony of them in general, than that of plenty of his seers. He is yet a scholar, than which kind of man there is nothing so simple, so sincere, none better. They are most part harmless, honest, upright, innocent, plain dealing man. Now, because they are commonly subject to such hazards and inconveniences as dodage, madness, simplicity, etc., Johannes Vosius would have good scholars to be highly rewarded, and had in some extraordinary respect above other men, to have greater privileges than the rest that adventure themselves and abbreviate their lives for the public good. But our patrons of learning are so far nowadays from respecting them uses, and giving that honor to scholars, a reward which they deserve, and are allowed by those indulgent privileges of many noble princes, that after all their pains taken in the universities, cost and charge, expenses, irksome hours, laborious tasks, wearesome days, dangers, hazards, barred interim from all pleasures which other men have, mute up like hawks all their lives. If they chance to wade through them, they shall in the end be rejected, contempt, and which is their greatest misery, driven to their shifts, exposed to want, poverty, and beggary. Their familiar attendance are malesuada, fames, et turpes e gestas, terribilés vis ou formés. Grief, labor, care, pale sickness, miseries, fear, filthy poverty, hunger that cries, terrible monsters to be seen with eyes. If there were nothing else to trouble them, the conceit of this alone were enough to make them all melancholy. Most other trades and professions, after some seven years apprenticeship, are enabled by their craft to live of themselves. A merchant adventures his goods at sea, and though his hazard be great, yet if one ship return of four, he likely makes a saving voyage. And husband men's gains are almost certain. Quibus ipsa jupiter, no granum protest. Wum jove himself can't harm. Des catos hyperbole, a great husband himself. Only scholars me things are most uncertain, unrespected, subject to all casualties and hazards. For, first, not one of a many proves to be a scholar. All are not capable and docile. Ex omniligno non fit mercurios. We can make majors and offices every year, but not scholars. Kings can invest nights and barons, as Sigismund the Emperor confessed. Universities can give degrees, and to Quates a poploquilibit as a protest. But he, nor they, nor all the world, can give learning. Make philosophers, artists, orates, poets. We can soon say, as Seneca well notes, o verum vurnum, o divitem. Point at a rich man, a good, a happy man, a prosperous man. O verum literarum. But it's not so easily performed to find out a learned man. Learning is not so quickly got, though they may be willing to take pains, to that end sufficiently informed, and liberally maintained by their patrons and parents. Yet few can compass it. Or if they be docile, yet all men's wills are not answerable to their wits. They can apprehend, but will not take pains. They are either seduced by bad companions, vellem poelum impingunt, vellem pokulum. They fall in with women or wine, and so spend their time to their friends' grief and their own undoings. Or, put case, they be studious, industrious, of ripe wits and perhaps good capacities. Then how many diseases of body and mind must they encounter? No labour in the world like unto study. It may be that temperature will not endure it, but striving to be excellent to know all, they lose health, wealth, wit, life, and all. Let him yet happily escape all these hazards, ere is intestinis with a body of brass, and is now consummate and ripe. He hath profited in his studies, and proceeded with all applause. After many expenses he is fit for preferment. Where shall he have it? He is as far to seek it as he was, after twenty years standing, at the first day of his coming to the university. For what cause shall he take, being now capable and ready? The most parable and easy, and about which many are employed, is to teach a school, turn lecture, or cure it, and for that he shall have falconers wages, ten pound per annum, and his diet, or some small stipend, so long as he can please his patron or the parish. If they approve him not, for usually they do but a year or two, as inconstant as they that cried Hosanna one day, and crucify him the other. Serving men like, he must go look a new master. If they do, what is his reward? At last thy snow-white age and suburb schools, shall toil in teaching boys their grammar rules. Like an ass he wears out his time for preventer, and can show a stump rod, togam tritam et lacram, set haters. An old torn gown, an ensign of his infelicity. He had this label for his pain, a modicum to keep him till he be decrepit, and that is all. Grammaticus non astphelix, et cetera. If he be a trencher chaplain in a gentleman's house, as a befell euphormio, after some seven-year service, he may perchance have a living to the halves, or some small rectory with the mother of the maids at length, a poor kinswoman, or a correct chambermaid, to have and to hold during the time of his life. But if he offend his good patron, or displease his lady mistress in the meantime, ducator planta velot ictus apherclo cacus, ponitur quervoras, siquit tenta verit un quam hisca. As Hercules did by cacus, he shall be dragged forth of doors by the heels away with him. If he bend his forces to some other studies, with an intent to be his secretus to some noblemen, or in such a place with an ambassador, he shall find that these persons rise like apprentices one under another, and in so many tradesmen's shops, when the master is dead, the foreman of the shop commonly steps in his place. Now, for poets, rhetoricians, historians, philosophers, mathematicians, officers, etc., they are like grasshoppers, sing they must in summer, and pine in the winter, for there is no preferment for them. Even so they were at first, if you will believe, that pleasant tale of Socrates, which he told fairer Phaedrus under a plain tree, at the banks of the river Isias. About noon when it was hot, and the grasshoppers made a noise, he took that sweet occasion to tell him a tale, how grasshoppers were once scholars, musicians, poets, etc., before the muses were born, and lived without meat and drink, and for that cause returned by Jupiter into grasshoppers. And maybe turned again, in tithonic cacadas, out liquiorm ranas, for any reward I see they are like to have, or else in the meantime I would they could live as they did, without any viaticum, like so many manucoriate. Those Indian birds of paradise, as we commonly call them, those I mean that live with the air and dew of heaven, and need no other food. For, being as they are, their rhetoric only serves them to curse their bad fortunes, and many of them, for want of means, are driven to hard shifts. From grasshoppers, they turn humble bees and wasps, plain parasites, and make the muses mules to satisfy their hunger-starred ponges, and get a mules-meat. To say truth, is the common fortune of most scholars to be servile and poor, to complain pitifully, and lay open their wants to their respectless paritrins, as cardendoth, as xylander, and many others, and which is too common in those dedicatory epistles, for hope of gain, to lie, flatter, and with hyperbolic eulogisms and commendations, to magnify and extol an illiterate unworthy idiot for his excellent virtues, whom they should rather, as Machiavelle observes, vilify and rail at downright for his most notorious villainies and vices. So they prostitute themselves as fitlers, or mercenary tradesmen, to serve great man's turns for a small reward. They are like Indians, they have store of gold, but know not the worth of it. For I am of Sunecius' opinion, King Heron got more by Simonides' acquaintance than Simonides did by his. They have their best education, good institution, sole qualification from us, and when they have done well, their honour and immortality from us. We are the living tombs, registers, and as so many trumpeters of their fame's. What was Achilles without Homer, Alexander without Arian and Kirchis, who had known the Caesar's but for Suetonius and Dion? Fixer and fortes ante Agamemnon a multi, set omnis il acrimabilis urgentur ignotiqua lunga nocte, carent quiavate sacro. Before great Agamemnon reigned, reigned Kings as great as he, and brave, whose huge ambitions now contained in the small compass of grave, in endless night they sleep unwept, unknown, no barred they had to make all time their own. They are more beholden to scholars than scholars to them, but they undervalue themselves, and so by those great men are kept down. Let them have that encyclopedia, all the learning in the world, they must keep it to themselves, live in base esteem, and starve, except they will submit, as Brudeus well hath it, so many good parts, so many end-signs of arts, virtues, be slavishly obnoxious to some illiterate potentate, and live under his insolent worship, or honor, like parasites, qui tant qu'un moures alienum, panum comédunt. For to say truth, art as he, non sunt lucrativé, as Guido Bonot, that great astrologer, could foresee. They be not gainful arts these, set as orientes et familique, but poor and hungry. Dat galénus opus, dat eustinianus honorus, set genus et speitius cogito irapides. The rich physician honored lawyers ride, whilst the poor scholar foots it by their side. Poverty is the muses petrimony, and as that political divinity teaches us, when Jupiter's daughters were each of them married to the gods, the muses alone were left solitary, helican, forsaken of all suitors, that I believe it was because they had no portion. Why did Calliope live so long and made, because she had no dowry to be paid? Ever since, all their followers are poor, forsaken, and left unto themselves, in so much that, as Petronius argues, you shall likely know them by their clothes. There came, set he, by chance unto my company, a fellow not very spruce to look on, that I could perceive by that note alone he was a scholar, whom commonly rich men hate. I asked him what he was. He answered, a poet. I demanded again why he was so wrecked. He told me this kind of learning never made any man rich. A merchant's gain is great, that goes to see. A soldier embossed all in gold. A flatterer lies foxed in brave array. A scholar only, ragged to behold. All which are ordinary students, right well perceiving in the universities, how unprofitable these poetical, mathematical, and philosophical studies are, how little respected, how few patrons, apply themselves in all haste to those three commodious professions of law, physics, and divinity, sharing themselves between them, rejecting these arts in the meantime, history, philosophy, philology, or lightly passing them over as pleasant toys fitting only table-talk and to furnish them with discourse. They are not so be hopeful. He that can tell his money hath arithmetic enough. He is a true geometrician that can measure out a good fortune to himself. A perfect astrologer that can cast a rise and fall of others and mark their errant motions to his own use. The best optics are to reflect the beams of some great man's favour and grace, to shine upon him. He is a good engineer that alone can make an instrument to get preferment. This was the common tenet and practice of Poland as Cormars observed not long since in the first book of his history. Their universities were generally base, not a philosopher, a mathematician, an antiquary, etc., to be found of any note amongst them, because they had no set reward or stipend. But every man but took himself to divinity. A good passage was their aim. This was the practice of some of our near-neighbours, as Lipsius invades. They thrust their children to the study of low and divinity before they be informed a right or capable of such studies. For even so we find, to serve a great man, to get an office in some bishop's court, to practice in some good town, or compass a benefit, is the mark we shoot at as being so advantageous, the highway to preferment. End of section 38.